5 Minutes or Less: I'll be home for...Software?

Courtesy of abc.net.au

News.com.au is reporting that it would be cheaper to pay for a round-trip ticket to fly from Australia to the States to buy Adobe software than it would be to purchase the software here in Australia.  From the article:

The Creative Suite Master 6 Collection in Australia costs $4,334. The same software carries a price of $2599 in the US, Gizmodo reported. That's a $1,735 price difference.... A return flight to Los Angeles costs $1147.58 on Virgin Australia.

Talk about lessons in arbitrage. Pretty incredible, although you have to ignore the social costs, including negative externalities of CO₂ emissions of the flight, the lost work product of time spent travelling to and from, and the additional costs borne on US and Australian immigration.

Is it really that surprising to software vendors that software piracy is so rampant? Why not save the cost of the ticket and the cost of the software and just use bittorrents?